Away a Long Time

Well, it's been a long time since I've last posted here. I do intend to get the posts back up and running, but I have had a lot of changes going on recently, and keeping up with my own life has been quite a bit distracting. This weekend, I will be heading to Grand Junction, CO for a conference where I will be presenting at two workshops, and trying to build connections for IRI. After that, I will be coming back home, and, with luck, be able to catch up with myself again.

Some of the ongoing events that I am working with include:

• The recent acceptance of my PhD application in Intercultural Education (hooray!)
• Making class selections for the program in August
• Weekly youth programs focusing on cognitive development and critical thinking
• Preparation for the Grand Junction Trip
• Rebuilding the IRI website (we should have a new site up in the next few months)
• Preparing for a training trip to the Philippines and Hong Kong
• I will be in the Philippines for several weeks in May
• I will be in Hong Kong for June and July

In short, I'm keeping busy. I didn't intend to stay away from the blog for so long, and I can't say when I will resume regular posting again, but I do intend to get things up and running in the near future.

WIP

I'm in the process of putting together my thoughts for the next Incoming Insights. I'm thinking of looking a bit more at direct vs. indirect identity, but there are a few other topics I'm looking at as well. I should have a bit more focus by next week.

Meetings and Other Things

This week is meeting with people and working through my to-do list. I find to-do lists are a lot like avalanches - sure it doesn't seem like much at first, but once it gets rolling, you realize you're probably going to get buried. Hopefully, I can keep on top of things and surf on top of things instead of getting tossed around under it all.

On the Road! Next up: Conceptual Thinking and teaching

It seems I wasn't able to pull my ideas together in time to get an extra blog in. This is due, primarily, to the fact that my chosen topic required more reflection than I had originally thought. It's also because the topic will probably take more than one post, which takes some extra time to write up. Instead, I will provide some insight into my upcoming insight - over the next few weeks, I plan to look at how the idea of conceptual training interacts with the practice of teaching.

During the work we have done with IRI, we have identified several areas where traditional (and some non-traditional) teaching methods can conflict with conceptual training. I plan to look at some of these areas of conflict to see why the conflict exists, and what we might be able to do to facilitate more critical and analytical thinking in our teaching methodology. Please note that many of these concerns aren't unique to our work - a lot of them are concerns that have been raised in education for years. The reason I am reviewing them is not because they are all original, but in the hopes that the insights we have gained may inform the ongoing discussion and perhaps present new windows into potential solutions.

But that's what's coming next - this week I am on the road! Next week, I may have the beginning of the teaching discussion, or I may talk a bit about what I've learned on my WY trip - depending mostly on how interesting the trip turns out to be.

Schedule Changes Change Things

Well, it appears that, due to both immigration policy changes and some issues regarding water availability in Chimoio, my trip to Mozambique has been postponed for the foreseeable future. The water issues are, apparently, creating a high-mosquito environment that Malaria turns into a high-risk environment, and is also creating water shortages. I don't have all the details on what the background on the issues are, but it is apparently significant enough that our Mozambican Director thinks I should probably stay away for now.

This leaves me with more time to find work, however, so it isn't all bad. With some contracted or adjunct work, I should be able to start rebuilding my cash reserves for the next few years working with IRI. Sometimes, one closed door opens another.

I will be traveling to Wyoming in early August to meet with Al when he gets back from Mozambique. We will discuss everything he has seen while he was there, and work on our goals for 2016 and beyond. There's a lot happening with IRI (even if my personal adventures are a bit curtailed), and we need to make sure we have a plan of action. Granted, most plans don't survive the first "interesting" event they encounter, but at least it gives us a foundation to build and modify our approach.

Exciting things are happening - we just need to make sure we are ready to act on them!

Checking in With A Thought

It seems I'm pretty busy this week. I'm still working on finding work to support my work, so that's keeping things exciting. I'm also working on a newsletter article for this month, and making sure I don't miss any birthdays (apparently, I know a LOT of people who were born in July). I've also been working on follow-up for the last few Incoming Insights articles, which may still take a little while.

In the meantime, I want to make sure that I'm clear about the reason we are looking in to the nature of human cognition, the effects of suppression, and the impact these things have on education and development. Ultimately, it is about building relationships. Not just relationships between ourselves and the people we work with, but how they relate with each other and other (often more aggressive and powerful) cultures around them. It is about identifying what goes wrong in relationships, and how to change things to make it right. All too often, organization or individuals will attempt to intervene in what is clearly a bad situation, only to find that their intervention has had its own set of negative consequences. Sometimes, the overall situation will still be improved, but occasionally, the intervention sets off a series of cultural events that ultimately makes things worse. There has been a lot of work that has gone into understanding what has happened in these cases, and more work focused on how to prevent similar issues in the future. We are focused on the latter. IRI wants to help people understand themselves and the world they live in so that they can build relationships and initiate works that are appropriate to their context. Our goal is to bring clarity and self-development to all areas of life: personal, social, economic, spiritual, educational, and whatever else may be affected. Much of what we have seen tells us that most people want to do good and be good people, but they often have disconnects about what is really good for themselves, their communities, and their environments. Our goal is not to correct them, but to give them the tools to figure out for themselves how to deal with their relationships.

That's all for now.

Preparing for the Fall

I am currently in the process of preparing for my fall activities. When I started working with IRI, I decided to save up enough money to work with them full-time for two years, with a plan to basically take a year off to work to save up enough for an additional few years. That was five years ago. I am now well past the point I thought I would need to get work again, but I have finally reached that point. As a result, I am now looking for work in undergraduate education (as an adjunct or lecturer), Instructional Design, or corporate training. While we still have plans for me to travel to Mozambique in August, this fall will hopefully entail me finding one of those three jobs to make back some of my savings, and finish paying off a few outstanding bills I have accumulated over the last five years. This week involves a lot of visits with potential employers, phone calls, and e-mails. It isn't terribly glamorous, but it is necessary, and I do look forward to teaching regularly again.

This does not mean I am stopping work with IRI - far from it, but the fact is, the current plans we have leave me relatively physically inactive for the upcoming semester at least, and I can use that time to recover some funds to facilitate future work. I will still be working on IRI material, and still posting blogs as regularly as possible. Thank you to everyone who has and is (and wants to?) support me and/or the work being done at IRI. Your help has been deeply appreciated.

Busy Week

I have had a lot going on this week, but proportionally not as much in the IRI department. With the trip to Alaska cancelled, I am in the process of reorganizing my schedule and helping some friends (who are moving). It isn't terribly exciting, but it is very much a part of life. I am planning another Incoming Insight before the end of the month.

In other news, Inside Out is great. If you can, go see it - it covers the impact of change and stress in a creative, entertaining way. How Pixar manages to keep producing creative films this frequently is beyond me, but they are doing a bang-up job. Go to the movie - take the kids (it is ostensibly for them, after all) and have fun...and possibly try not to cry (it is Pixar).

Trip Preparations and Changes

It appears I get another schedule change. I will no longer be going to Alaska this year - the meeting was postponed for scheduling and financial reasons, but is being rescheduled for next year. I will be heading to Mozambique and South Africa, however. I am still working on the details, but it appears I will be heading over mid-July and staying for at least a month or more. Of course, procedures for getting a visa for Moz. have changed, so I also have to figure out how to get the visa so I can get there. It's things like this that keep life interesting.

Planning, Planning, Planning

We are working on our scheduling for 2015 right now at IRI, and it looks like I will be traveling quite a bit during the year. If anyone happens to be in the areas I will be visiting, and wants to talk about our work, they are welcome to contact me to see if we can meet.

The current (verified) plan is:
Feb. 2-5 - Casper, WY*
Mar. 13-15 - Grand Junction, CO
April 12-17 - Lewistown, MT

Meetings still in planning include:
Broken Arrow, OK - Early March
Alaska - July
Hong Kong - Fall 2015

We are also hoping to schedule some stops with our friends and supporters to give personal updates. If you have any interest in arranging meetings with me or anyone else at IRI, you can contact us at: info@insiaghtagentsofchange.com.

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*Edit: this is actually 3-6. My mind was off a day, apparently.

Return to the U.S.A.

I am headed back to the States - the trip should take about 23 hours or so. I expect I will be next to useless for about a day after getting back, what with jet lag and all. I hope to have a bigger post later this week detailing some of the highlights of the trip. Next week, we will be back to the ABCs of ABC!

Insights from Hong Kong

It appears I have not made it back to the U.S. after all.

Originally, the plan was for Al and I return to the U.S. after spending a few weeks in Hong Kong to follow up with people and work out some plans for next year. While we did accomplish these things (and more), I was given the opportunity to help our host's church. Ken had been the preacher at a church in Hong Kong and after his death, the church needed someone to take over the preaching. Fortunately, Ken had already made plans for a successor - unfortunately, that successor was from the Philippines, and the immigration procedures were not complete. As a result, there was a gap between Ken's death and when his successor could make it to Hong Kong that required an interim preacher.

Al volunteered me to fill in.

I'm not at all upset with his presumption - in fact, this has provided me with an opportunity to get to know several of the friends we made on our trip better, as well as get to know Hong Kong better in general. I am currently working on plans for next year, meeting new people, working with our new board member (who is a Hong Kong national), and even investigating job opportunities so that I can support myself when I return next year as part of our ongoing plans for developing programs here, in the Philippines, and in Myanmar. This is a tremendous opportunity, and I am grateful for Al's timely suggestion to the church here. I am also grateful for the people I have met so far, and look forward to working with everyone here for the next two months.

The current schedule now has me returning to the U.S. in late July. I will be posting more about my U.S. plans as my return date approaches.

Philippines Log: Friday, 3/22/2013

We have made it to the Philippines! I arrived in Hong Kong a little over a week ago after a 23-hour flight. We stayed over the weekend at Ken’s church (Ken is hosting us in Hong Kong), and picked up a few final supplies before heading out for Manila on Wednesday. Compared to the flight to get to Hong Kong, the flight to Manila was fairly quick – only about an hour and a half in the air. We (Al, Ken, and I) arrived at the Philippines and were picked up by our host here, Marie, and Dave, an IRI board member who had arrived the day before. Marie took us south, stopping by a mall (to pick up a few more things we managed to remember only after getting on the plane in Hong Kong) and eventually crossing a lake to arrive at her home, a concrete and metal house on a mountain overlooking said lake.

Currently, we are preparing for the Insight Seminar next week. We arrived early, so only those of us from Hong Kong, a national minister named Cody, and Marie and her family are here right now. We expect the rest of the group to arrive today and late tomorrow. In total, there should be about 24 of us.

A Late Arrival in Feburary

It's been a while since my last post. Preparations for the trip to the Philippines are underway, and I have just finished my battery of vaccinations to get ready for the trip. I will be traveling first to Hong Kong, then on to Manila, where Al and I will be for about a month - a week for the seminar, and three for follow-up coaching with the participants and sponsoring organization. On the trip back, I will be staying in Hong Kong for about three weeks for more coaching.

While our main focus remains Africa (there are plans for me to head back as early as August), our long-term goals have always included Asia, so it is exciting to get a chance to see what kind of impact our seminar and coaching program can have in a completely different cultural context. I expect everyone this trip will learn quite a lot.

New Year: New Ideas

It’s a new year, IRI has a new website, and I am moving some of the content of this blog over to the new IRI blog/news feed. This means I will be changing the content of this blog a little in 2013. Up until now, IRI didn’t have a dedicated blog/news outlet that was really functional, so this site was a kind of not-technically-but-the-best-you-will-get news blog for IRI. Now that our website has its own news blog, I can take blog in a few new directions that I have wanted to explore. I will still be covering personal news – where I am going, what I am up to, etc. What I plan to add are more personal reflections on the impact of the work we do and the theories behind it. Thus, you will see a number of new and perhaps even interesting reflections on how cognition (as understood through perception, reason, and emotion) intersect with various areas of life.

Will this be interesting? Will it be educational? Will it be a good cure for insomnia? I have no idea. This is a new experiment for me, and so your feedback and thoughts about what I might talk about are welcome. 

So now you have an idea of what’s coming this year. I hope you will enjoy the blog and the new IRI news feed. Stay tuned for more insights!

State of the Year Summary

I thought it might be good to wrap up the year with some information on my plans for next year. IRI has been very busy this year, between our work in Africa and several new opportunities opening up in North America and Asia, it has been very exciting. Our perpetual car malfunctions in Africa combined with the typical non-profit lack of funds, however, have also made it very frustrating. This feast-and-famine year means I have to compromise between following up on what's opened up and long-term financial planning.Which leads me to my current plans for next year:

The Plan

January starts with a seminar in Torrington from the seventh through the eleventh. This seminar is a pilot seminar for our board of directors and various people we've met over the years who have been interested in our seminar work. Once we've wrapped up the seminar, I will head up to Spokane, WA to visit some contacts and to find temporary work until my next major trip. Finances are tight, and temp work will help cover my recurring bills while I'm traveling in March and April.

In March I head off to Hong Kong and the Philippines. We will be working with a Hong Kong organization for the first few weeks of the trip, then head over to the Philippines to conduct a seminar and follow-up training. Our departure and return dates are not set yet, but I expect to be overseas for about two months.

May sees me back in the U.S. At this point, if my accounting skills are even remotely reliable, I will be just short of broke and back in Spokane. This will begin what I am tentatively calling the "Jason goes back to work" season. In addition to looking for temporary employment, I will also be promoting our developmental training and consulting to area businesses and organizations. I have found that the tours I have conducted the last few years, while great for keeping in touch, don't really give me much time to follow up and promote our training to local organizations. Part of IRI's long-term financial strategy has always included using our training and consulting in a professional capacity to fund nonprofit work, so I want to start developing a reputation in the business community.  I expect to be busy for several months during this phase.

Assuming all goes well in the "Jason goes back to work" season, I should be ready to get back to traveling in the fall. August marks the beginning of a new school year in the U.S. as well as the beginning of many academic conferences. My plan is to hit as many conferences as time (and work) allows in order to meet with like-minded people, develop relationships, and promote our training. This will probably consist of weekend travel, so I plan to remain based in Spokane unless I have found better work elsewhere. This period of work and conferencing will continue until late November, with my final conference being ICOM, which takes place just before Thanksgiving. From there, it is time to meet with my associates and friends in the Midwest over the holidays, review the year's successes and failures, and plan for the next year.

Concluding Thoughts

So that's The Plan in a nutshell. Will the plan work out as stated? I seriously doubt it, but just having a plan helps me manage new opportunities and navigate obstacles. The goal of any year-long plan is not so much to actually do everything you plan, but to give you a foundation that allows you to adapt to changes while still being as productive as possible.

Thanks to everyone who has been following my adventures this year. In addition to my other activities, I intend to change the way I handle these blogs soon. I want to increase my updates and provide more information on both the work I am doing and how the theories I have been working with impact how we can understand our world. I hope you'll all join me for what should be a fun and exciting year!